COLUMN: When it comes to sports enthusiasts, this Pope is a saint
Freddie Freeman should have been playing first base for the Atlanta Braves this weekend. Tiger Woods was supposed to be making his way through Amen Corner at Augusta National. The Final Four last week in Atlanta? It was a might-have-been and a never-was.
The first weeks of April are a sports fan’s dream. April does not whet our appetite. It feeds our soul. It is three scoops ... with sprinkles.
There is no other stretch on the calendar quite like it. Even spring football is in the party mix.
But America has been asked to stay home and wear a mask. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean wearing a catcher’s mask behind home plate.
Bobby Pope has been stir crazy, like being all dressed up with nowhere to go.
“A friend told me the other day he now knows what hell is like,’’ Bobby said. “No sports.’’
Bobby is Middle Georgia’s sports authority. In a game of thrones, he is the undisputed king. He has worn so many hats – from broadcaster to athletic director to executive director of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame – he could be in the market for another hat rack. He is a walking, talking encyclopedia of local teams, players and coaches. Trying to sneak a sports trivia question past Bobby is like trying to dunk over LeBron James.
A self-described “sports junkie,” he can recall football scores without the benefit of a Google search. He can remember how many points Sam Mitchell scored in his basketball career at Mercer. He has a card catalog of coaching stories from Gene Brodie to Pat Dye.
He can tell you about how Alva Lee “Bobo” Holloman – born in Bobby’s hometown of Thomaston – is the only pitcher since 1900 to throw a no-hitter in his first major league start. Or how Hugh Frank Radcliffe, another legendary pitcher from Thomaston, once struck out 28 batters for R.E. Lee Institute in a game against Macon’s Lanier High at Silvertown Park in the mill village. It happened 72 years ago this week, on April 19, 1948.
Although Bobby will turn 75 at the end of this month, he is not ready for the old folks’ home. His body may have slowed – he won’t win many foot races these days – but his sports IQ has the precision of an Olympic gold medal marksman.
“I couldn’t do math on a dare, but I can sit here and watch ‘Jeopardy!’ and they’ll have a sports question, and I can reel them off,’’ he said. “I sometimes ask myself, ‘Why do you know so much about sports, and you don’t know anything about anything else?’’’
He had a bounce in his step the night of Feb. 22, when he was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Macon City Auditorium. He is now a card-carrying member of six halls of fame — the Macon Sports Hall of Fame, Mercer Sports Hall of Fame, Thomaston-Upson County Hall of Fame, Georgia Radio Hall of Fame, the Boys & Girls Club Hall of Fame and now the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.
There aren’t many who can make that claim. Still, Bobby has never been one to brag. This is a humble man.
“I once told my mother I had been lucky in life,’’ he said. “And she told me no, I haven’t been lucky. I have been blessed. And I truly have been.’’
Although he brushed elbows with famous athletes and coaches, his biggest hero was his mom. The late Doris Pope was a single parent who raised three children. She worked in the spinning department at Thomaston Mills to put food on the table and make sure Bobby and his sisters went to college.
As a youngster, he would open packs of baseball cards, stuff the pink bubble gum into his mouth, and study the backs of the cards with the player’s bio and statistics.
“You could ask me anything, and I could answer it,’’ he said. “I was a sports nut. I loved it.’’
When he was 13, he did play-by-play of Little League games for a radio station in Thomaston.
He never was much of an athlete himself. He had a modest career running track and playing football for Coach Jim Cavan at R.E. Lee. He was a member of the 1961 football team that lost to Valdosta in the Class AAA state championship game.
Bobby enrolled at Georgia College in Milledgeville and was working at a men’s clothing store when he learned of a job opening for a reporter at WMAZ (now WMAC) radio. His first day was on Nov. 7, 1964, a football Saturday when Alabama beat LSU in Birmingham. (The Alabama fan in him likes to throw in that side note.)
He worked in radio, TV and sales at the station for the next 21 years. He broadcast high school football games from frigid press boxes. He sat behind the mike from the bleachers in bandbox gyms in towns like Cordele, Eastman and Irwinton.
He was the first radio announcer for Mercer basketball in 1970, and once had to do play-by-play without being able to see the game. Technical difficulties forced him to find a pay phone in a hallway outside the gym at Georgia State in Atlanta. The engineer would lean around the corner, yell to him who had scored, and Bobby would relay it to his radio audience back home. After the game, he told Mercer Coach Bill Bibb: “I’m sure you saw a different game than I did.’’
He was a sports director and broadcaster for the TV station and was part of the move from the old studio on Cochran Short Route to the new facility at the top of Gray Highway in 1974. He once got bit by a horse during an interview, but that’s a story for another day.
For more than 20 years, Bobby gave “live” updates from The Masters golf tournament to dozens of radio stations every April. For 37 years, he did a college football scoreboard show on the radio on Saturday afternoons. In the days before apps, ESPN and the Internet, it was the only way many fans could get the scores. Former U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss once told him he would listen to those scoreboard shows on his way back from Athens until the cackle of the car radio faded on his way home to Moultrie.
Bobby left WMAZ in 1985 to serve as sports information director, and later athletic director, at Mercer. His network of contacts and connections landed him seats on just about every steering committee, planning committee, search committee and nominating committee that had anything to do with sports. A devoted “sports historian,’’ he once wrote a popular weekly column for The Telegraph. At the Macon Touchdown Club’s annual Jamboree in February, he received a standing ovation from the overflow crowd when he was recognized for his longtime service.
He stands on the shoulders of his wife, Carol, one of those football/basketball/whatever-sport-is-in-season widows. “You know how it is,’’ Bobby said. “You work hours, days and weeks with no holidays. You kind of live for the next event.’’
Sadly, there is no “next event” tomorrow, no final round of the Masters today or early season predictions for the Cy Young Award next week. With the sports networks looking to fill empty airtime, he has watched replays of Final Fours from yesteryear. He saw many of them in person when he was AD at Mercer.
Bobby has his memories.
And, for now, that will have to be enough.
Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph.